BT Forklift SPE 125 160 135S 125L

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DescriptionBT Forklift SPE 125 160 135S 125L 160L Service

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BT SPE125 SPE160 SPE135S SPE125L SPE160L ForkliftNumber of Pages: 222
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torture. And how wise he was, how considerate, how worthy of the
treasure that her overflowing heart would heap on him! But it could
not be. She dared not face her father, her relatives, her host of
friends, and confess with proud humility that she had found her
mate in some unknown Englishman, the hired driver of a motor-car.
At any rate, in that moment of exquisite agony, Cynthia did not know
what she might dare when put to the test. Her lips parted, her eyes
glistened, and she turned aside to gaze blindly at the distant Welsh
hills.
“If we don’t hurry,” she said with the slowness of desperation, “we
shall never complete our programme by nightfall.... And we must not
forget that Mrs. Leland awaits us at Chester.”
“To-night I shall realize the feelings of Charles the First when he
witnessed the defeat of his troops at the battle of Rowton Moor,” was
Medenham’s savage growl.
Hardly aware of her own words, Cynthia murmured:
“Though defeated, the poor king did not lose hope.”
“No: the Stuarts’ only virtue was their stubbornness. By the way, I
am a Stuart.”
“Evidently that is why you are flying from Chester,” she contrived to
say with a little laugh.
“I pin my faith in the Restoration,” he retorted. “It is a fair parallel. It
took Charles twenty years to reach Rowton Moor, but the modern
clock moves quicker, for I am there in five days.”
“I am no good at dates——” she began, but Mrs. Devar discovered
them from afar, and fluttered a telegram. They hastened to her—
Cynthia flushed at the thought that she might be recalled to London
—which she would not regret, since a visit to the dentist to-day is
better than the toothache all next week—and Medenham steeled
himself against imminent unmasking.
But Mrs. Devar’s main business in life was self.
“I have just heard from James,” she cooed. “He promised to run up
to Shrewsbury to-day, but finds he cannot spare the time. Count
Edouard told him that Mr. Vanrenen was in town, and he regrets he
was unable to call before he left.”
“Before who left?” demanded Cynthia.
“Your father, dear.”
“Left for where?”
Mrs. Devar screwed her eyes at the pink slip.
“That is all it says. Just ‘left’?”
“That doesn’t sound right, anyhow,” laughed Medenham.
“Oh, but this is too ridiculous!” and Cynthia’s foot stamped. “I have
never before known my father behave in this Jack-in-the-Box
fashion.”
“Mrs. Leland will clear up the whole mystery,” volunteered
Medenham.
“But what mystery is there?” purred Mrs. Devar, blinking first at one,
then at the other. She bent over the telegram again.
“James sent this message from the West Strand at 9.30 a.m.
Perhaps he had just heard of Mr. Vanrenen’s departure,” she said.
Judging from Cynthia’s occasional references to her father’s
character and associates, Medenham fancied it was much more likely
that the American railway magnate had merely refused to meet
Captain Devar. But therein he was mistaken.
At the very hour that the three were settling themselves in the
Mercury before taking the road to Leominster, Mr. Vanrenen, driven
by a perturbed but silent Simmonds, stopped the car on the outskirts
of Whitchurch and asked an intelligent-looking boy if he had noticed
the passing of an automobile numbered X L 4000.
“I s’pose you mean a motor-car, sir?” said the boy.
Vanrenen, a tall man, thin, close-lipped, with high cheekbones, and
long nose, a man utterly unlike his daughter save for the wide-open,
all-seeing eyes, smiled at the naïve correction; with that smile some
enchanter’s wand mirrored Cynthia in her father’s face. Even
Simmonds, who had seen no semblance of a smile in the features of
the chilly, skeptical man by whom he was dragged out of bed at an
unearthly hour in the morning at Bristol, witnessed the alchemy, and
marveled.
“Yes, sir, rather,” continued the boy, brimming over with enthusiasm.
“The gentleman went along the Hereford Road, he did, yesterday
mornin’. He kem back, too, wiv a shuffer, an’ he’s a-stayin’ at the
Symon’s Yat Hotel.”
Peter Vanrenen frowned, and Cynthia vanished, to be replaced by
the Wall Street speculator who had “made a pyramid in Milwaukees.”
Whence, then, had Cynthia telephoned? Of course, his alert mind hit
on a missed mail as the genesis of the run to Hereford early on
Sunday, but he asked himself why he had not been told of a
changed address. He could not guess that Cynthia would have
mentioned the fact had she spoken to him, but in the flurry and
surprise of hearing that he was not in the hotel she forgot to tell the
attendant who took her message that she was at Symon’s Yat and
not at Hereford.
“Are you sure about the car?” he said, rendered somewhat skeptical
by the boy’s overfullness of knowledge.
“Yes, sir. Didn’t me an’ Dick Davies watch for it all chapel-time?”
“But why?—for that car in particular?”
“The gentleman bust his tire, an’ we watched him mendin’ it, an’ he
set us a sum, an’ promised us a bob each if we did it.”
“Meanwhile he went to Hereford and back?”
“I s’pose so, sir.”
Peter Vanrenen’s attention was held by that guarded answer, and,
being an American, he was ever ready to absorb information,
especially in matters appertaining to figures.
“What was the sum?” he said.
To his very keen annoyance he found that he could not determine
straight off how long two men take to mow a field of grass, which
one of them could cut in four days and the other in three. Indeed,
he almost caught himself saying “three days and a half,” but stopped
short of that folly.
“About a day and three-quarters,” he essayed, before the silence
grew irksome.
“Wrong, sir. Is it worth a bob?” and the urchin grinned delightfully.
“Yes,” he said.
“A day an’ five-sevenths, ’coss one man can do one quarter in a day,
and t’other man a third, which is seven-twelfths, leavin’ five-twelfths
to be done next day.”
Though the millionaire financier was nettled, he did not show it, but
paid the shilling with apparent good grace.
“Did you find that out—or was it Dick Davies?” he asked.
“Both of us, sir, wiv’ a foot rule.”
“And how far is the Symon’s Yat Hotel, measured by that rule?”
“Half a mile, sir, down that there lane.”
While traveling slowly in the narrow way, Simmonds turned his head.
“It doesn’t follow that because the boy saw Viscount Medenham
yesterday his lordship is here now, sir,” he said.
“You just do as you are told and pass no remarks,” snapped
Vanrenen.
If the head of the house of Vanrenen were judged merely by that
somewhat unworthy retort he would not be judged fairly. He was
tired physically, worried mentally; he had been brought from Paris at
an awkward moment; he was naturally devoted to his daughter; he
believed that Medenham was an unmitigated scamp and Simmonds
his tool; and his failure to solve Medenham’s arithmetical problem
still rankled. These considerations, among others, may be pleaded in
his behalf.
But, if Simmonds, who had stood on Spion Kop, refused to be
browbeaten by a British earl, he certainly would not grovel before an
American plutocrat. He had endured a good deal since five o’clock
that morning. He told his tale honestly and fully; he even
sympathized with a father’s distress, though assured in his own mind
that it was wholly unwarranted; he was genuinely sorry on hearing
that Mr. Vanrenen had been searching the many hotels of Bristol for
two hours before he came to the right one. But to be treated like a
serf?—no, not if Simmonds knew it!
The car stopped with a jerk. Out leaped the driver.
“Now you can walk to the hotel,” he said, though he distinguished
the hotel by an utterly inappropriate adjective.
The more sudden the crisis the more prepared was Vanrenen—that
was his noted characteristic, whether dealing with men or money.
“What has bitten you?” he demanded calmly.
“You must find somebody else to do your detective work, that is all,”
came the stolid answer.
“Don’t be a mule.”
“I’m not a mule. You’re makin’ a d—d row about nothing. Viscount
Medenham is a gentleman to his finger tips, and if you were one
you’d know that he wouldn’t hurt a hair of Miss Vanrenen’s head, or
any lady’s, for that matter.”
“Where my daughter is concerned I am not a gentleman, or a
viscount, or a person who makes d—d rows. I am just a father—a
plain, simple father—who thinks more of his girl than of any other
object in this wide world. If I have hurt your feelings I am sorry. If I
am altogether mistaken I’ll apologize and pay. I’m paying now. This
trip will probably cost me fifty thousand dollars that I would have
scooped in were I in Paris to-morrow. Your game is to attend to the
benzine buzz part of the contract and leave the rest to me. Shove
ahead, and step lively!”
To his lasting credit, Simmonds obeyed: but the row had cleared the
air; Vanrenen liked the man, and felt now that his original estimate
of his worth was justified.
At the hotel, of course, he had much more to learn than he
expected. Oddly enough, the praises showered on “Fitzroy”
confirmed him in the opinion that Cynthia was the victim of a clever
knave, be he titled aristocrat or mere adventurer. For the first time,
too, he began to suspect Mrs. Devar of complicity in the plot!
A nice kind of chaperon she must be to let his girl go boating with a
chauffeur on the Wye! And her Sunday’s illness was a palpable
pretense—an arranged affair, no doubt, to permit more boating and
dallying in this fairyland of forest and river. What thanks he owed to
that Frenchman, Marigny!
Indeed, it was easy to hoodwink this hard-headed man in aught that
affected Cynthia. Count Edouard displayed a good deal of tact when
he called at the Savoy Hotel late the previous night, but his obvious
relief at finding Vanrenen in London had induced the latter to depart
for Bristol by a midnight train rather than trust wholly to Mrs.
Leland’s leisured strategy.
He did not go straight to Hereford for the best of reasons. He had
told Cynthia of Mrs. Leland’s coming, and had heard of if not from
her in response to his letter. If he rushed off now to intercept the
motorists at Hereford he would defeat the very purpose he had in
view, which was to interpose an effectual shield between the
scoundrelly lordling and his prey, while avoiding any risk of hurting
his daughter’s feelings. Moreover, he was eminently a just man.
Hearing from Marigny that Simmonds, the original cause of all the
trouble, was skulking at Bristol, to Bristol he went. From that
starting-point, with his knowledge of Cynthia’s probable route, he
could surely pick up traces of the predatory car at most towns
through which it passed. Moreover, he could choose his own time for
joining the party in front, which by this time he was fully resolved
on, either at Chester or farther north.
Transcending these minor features of a disturbing affair was his self-
confessed fear of Cynthia. In the unfathomed deeps of a father’s
love for such a daughter there is ever an element of fear. Not for all
his wealth would Vanrenen cast a shadow on the unsullied intimacy
of their affection. Therefore, he would be wary, circumspect, ready
to accept as most credible theories which he would scout in any
other conditions, quick to discern the truth, slow to point out
wherein an inexperienced girl had erred, but merciless to the
fortune-hunter who had so jeopardized Cynthia’s happiness and his
own.
Hence, his appearance at the Symon’s Yat Hotel seemed to have no
more serious import than a father’s wish to delight his daughter by
an unexpected participation in her holiday. No secret had been made
as to the Mercury’s halting-place that day. Cynthia herself had
written the address in the hotel register, adding a request that
letters, if any, were to be forwarded to Windermere.
By chance, the smiling landlady’s curiosity as to “Fitzroy” raised a
new specter.
“He must be a gentleman,” she said, “because he belongs to the
Thames Rowing Club; he also spoke and acted like one. Why did he
employ an assistant chauffeur? That is most unusual.”
Vanrenen could only explain that arrangements for the tour were
made during his absence in France, so he was not fully posted as to
details.
“Oh, they did not intend to remain here on Saturday, but Miss
Vanrenen liked the place, and seemed to be rather taken with the
hotel——” whereat the millionaire nodded his complete agreement
—“so Mr. Fitzroy telegraphed for a man named Dale to come to
Hereford. There was some misunderstanding, however, and Dale
only arrived yesterday in the car. He left by an early train this
morning, after doing the garage work.”
Simmonds, candor itself about Medenham, had said no word of the
Earl of Fairholme or of Dale. Marigny, of course, was silent as to the
Earl, since it might have ruined his last faint hope of success had the
two perplexed fathers met; Simmonds’s recent outburst opposed an
effectual bar to farther questioning; so Vanrenen was free to deduce
all sorts of possibilities from the existence of yet another villainous
chauffeur.
Unhappily, he availed himself of the opportunity to the full. The fair
countryside and the good food of the March counties made little or
no appeal to him thenceforth. He pined to be in Chester, yet
restrained the impulse that urged a frenzied scurry to the Banks of
the Dee, for he was adamant in his resolve not to seem to have
pursued Cynthia, but rather to have joined her as the outcome of a
mere whim after she had met Mrs. Leland.
The Mercury arrived at Ludlow long before Vanrenen crossed the
Wye Bridge at Hereford. Medenham stopped the car at “The
Feathers,” that famous magpie among British Inns, where Cynthia
admired and photographed some excellent woodcarving, and saw an
iron-studded front door which has shut out revellers and the night
on each alternate round of the clock since 1609, if not longer.
If they hurried over luncheon they were content to dawdle in the
picturesque streets, and Cynthia was reluctant to leave the fine old
castle, in which Milton’s “Masque of Comus” was first played on
Michaelmas night of 1634. At first, she yielded only to the flood of
memories pent in every American brain when the citizen of the New
World stands in one of these treasure-houses of history and feels the
passing of its dim pageants; when they stood together in the ruined
banqueting hall, Medenham gave play to his imagination, and strove
to reconstruct a scene once spread before the bright eyes of a
maiden long since dead.
“You will please regard yourself,” he said, “as the Lady Alice Egerton,
daughter of the Earl of Bridgwater, Lord President of the Marches of
Wales, who, with her two brothers, was benighted in the Forest of
Heywood while riding to Ludlow to witness her father’s installation in
his high office. Milton was told of her adventures by Henry Lawes,
the musician, and he wrote the ’Masque of Comus’ to delight her
and her friends. Have you read ‘Comus’?”
“No,” said Cynthia, almost timidly, for she was beginning to fear this
masterful man whose enthusiasm caught her to his very soul at such
moments.
“Ah, but you shall. It ranks high among the miracles of English
poetry wrought by Milton. Many a mile from Ludlow have I called to
mind one of its incomparable passages:
A thousand phantasies
Begin to throng into my memory—
Of calling shapes, and beckoning
shadows dire,
And airy tongues that syllable men’s
names
 On sands, and shores, and desert
wildernesses.
And now you, the heroine of the masque, must try to imagine that
you are lost in a wild wood represented by a carpet spread here, in
the center of the hall. Seated there on a dais, is your father the Earl,
surrounded by his officers and retainers. Near you are your brothers,
Lord Brackley and Thomas Egerton, so blinded by sprites that they
cannot see you, though keen enough to note the bright eyes and
flushed cheeks of other ladies of high degree bidden to Ludlow from
neighboring shires for the merry-making. And mark you, this is no
rude gathering of unlettered squires and rough men-at-arms. How is
it possible that an uncultured throng should listen rapturously to the
noblest performance of the kind that exists in any language, wherein
each speech is a majestic soliloquy, eloquent, sublime, with an
uncloying word-music acclaimed by three centuries?”
The sheer wonder in Cynthia’s face warned him that this brief
excursion into the pages of Macaulay had better cease, so he
focused his thoughts on the actual representation of the masque in
which he had taken part ten years ago at Fairholme.
“I must ask you to concede that the lords and ladies, the civic
dignitaries and their wives, for whose amusement Milton spread the
pinions of his genius, were far better equipped to understand his
lyric flights than any similar assemblage that could be collected
haphazard in some modern castle. They did not pretend—they knew.
Even you, Lady Alice, could frame a neat verse in Latin and cap
some pleasant jest with a line from Homer. When Milton dreamed
aloud of bathing in the Elysian dew of the rainbow, of inhaling the
scents of nard and cassia, ‘which the musky wings of the Zepyhr
scatter through the cedared alleys of the Hesperides,’ they followed
each turn and swoop of his fancy with an active sense of its truth
and beauty. And what a brilliant company! How the red flare of torch
and cresset would flicker on the sheen of silk, the luster of velvet,
the polished brightness of morion and spear. I think I can see those
gallant gentlemen and fine ladies grouped round the players who
told of the strange pranks played by the God of Mirth. Perhaps that
same fair Alice, who supplied the motive of the masque as well as its
leading lady, may be linked with you by stronger ties than those of
mere feminine grace——”
Cynthia did not blush: she grew white, but shook her head.
“You cannot tell,” he said. “‘Comus’ was played in Ludlow only
fourteen years after the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers in New
England, and I would remind you that we stocked the new nation in
the west with some of the bluest blood in Britain. Even in this hall
there were Puritans whose ascetic tastes disapproved of Milton’s
imageries, of children play-acting, of the brave show made by the
gentry——”
“My mother’s people lived in Pennsylvania for generations,” she
broke in with a strange wistfulness.
“I knew it,” he cried in triumph. “Tell me the names of the first-
nighters at the Milton Theater, Ludlow, on that autumn evening in
1634, and warrant me to find you an authentic ancestor.”
Cynthia bent a puzzled brow at him.
“After this, I shall apply myself to ‘Comus’ with added
comprehension,” she said. “But—you take my breath away; have
you, then, delved so deep in the mine of English history that you can
people ’most every ruined pile in Britain with the men and women of
the dead years?”
He laughed, and colored a little, with true British confusion at having
been caught in an extravagant mood.
“There you lay bare the mummer,” he said. “What clever fellows
actors would be if they grasped the underlying realities of all the fine
words they mouth! No; I quote ‘Comus’ only because on one half-
forgotten occasion I played in it.”
“Where?”
The prompt question took him unaware.
“At Fairholme,” he said.
“Is that another castle?”
“No—merely a Georgian residence.”
“I seem to have heard of it—somewhere—I can’t remember.”
He remembered quite well—was not Mrs. Devar, student of Burke,
sitting in the car at the castle gate?
“Oh, we must hurry,” he said shamefacedly. “I have kept you here
too long, for we have yet to
trace huge forests and unharbour’d
heaths,
Infamous hills and sandy perilous wilds,
before we see Chester—and Mrs. Leland.”
With that the bubble was pricked, and staid Ludlow became a busy
market-town again, its streets blocked by the barrows of hucksters
and farmers’ carts, its converging roads thronged with cattle. At
Shrewsbury Medenham was vouchsafed a gleam of frosty humor by
Mrs. Devar’s anxiety lest her son might have obeyed her earlier
injunctions, and kept tryst at “The Raven” after all. That trivial
diversion soon passed. He hoped that Cynthia would share the front
seat with him in the final run to Chester; but she remained tucked
up in the tonneau, and the dread that kept her there was bitter-
sweet to him, since it betrayed her increasing lack of confidence in
herself.
The rendezvous was at the Grosvenor Hotel, and Medenham had
made up his mind how to act long before the red towers of Chester
Cathedral glowed above the city’s haze in the fire of a magnificent
sunset. Dale was waiting on the pavement when the Mercury drew
up at the galleried entrance to the hotel.
Medenham leaped down.
“Good-by, Miss Vanrenen,” he said, holding out his hand. “I can
catch an early train to town by hurrying away at once. This is Dale,
who will take my place. He is thoroughly reliable, and an even more
careful driver than I am.”
“Are you really going—like that?” faltered Cynthia, and her face
blanched at the suddenness of it.
“Yes. I shall have the pleasure of seeing you in London when you
return.”
Their hands met in a firm clasp. Mrs. Devar, too flustered at first to
gasp more than an “Oh!” of astonishment, leaned forward and shook
his hand with marked cordiality.
“You must tell Dale to take great care of us,” she said, knowingly.
“I think he realizes the exceeding trust I repose in him,” he said, but
the accompanying smile was meant for Cynthia, and she read into it
a farewell that presaged many things.
He disappeared without another word. When a slim, elegantly-
gowned lady had hastened to the door from the drawing-room,
whence she was summoned by a page, she found two dust-covered
figures in the act of alighting from a well-appointed car. Her next
glance was at the solemn jowl of the chauffeur.
“Cynthia, my darling girl!” she cried, with arms thrown wide.
There could be no doubting the heartiness of the greeting, and in
that motherly embrace Cynthia felt a repose, a security, that she had
been willfully skeptical of during many weary hours. But polite usage
called for an introduction, and Mrs. Leland and Mrs. Devar eyed each
other warily, with the smiles of convention.
Mrs. Leland glanced at Dale.
“And who is this?” she asked, seizing the opportunity to settle a
point that was perplexing her strangely.
“Our chauffeur,” said Cynthia, and a glint of fun showed through the
wanness of her cheeks.
“But not—not——”
Even smooth-tongued Mrs. Leland was at a loss.
“Not Fitzroy, who left us a minute ago. This man’s name is Dale. One
wonders, though, how you knew—why you doubted,” cried Cynthia
in sharp discernment.
“Pray why did Fitzroy leave you a minute ago?” was all that the
other woman could find to say.
“He had to return to London. But, there—it is I who ought to ask
questions. Let us go inside. I want to get some of the grit out of my
eyes and hair; then I shall become an absolute mark of interrogation
—so I warn you. Of course, I am delighted to see you; but queer
things have happened, and I am pining to have them cleared up.
When did you see father last? Is he still in London?”
Mrs. Leland answered, with freer speech now, but in her heart she
was saddened by Medenham’s duplicity. Six months earlier he and
the Earl had dined at the villa she was occupying at San Remo for
the winter. She then took a great liking to him on account of his shy
and reticent but singularly pleasing manners. She was prepared to
laugh at the present escapade when she had discussed it with him
that night. Now he had fled, doubtless through fear. That was bad.
That looked ugly and mean. Most certainly Peter Vanrenen had acted
rightly in bringing her post-haste from Trouville. She must use all her
skill if mischief were to be avoided.
 CHAPTER XIII
WHEREIN WRATH BEGUILES GOOD JUDGMENT
“
Good-mornin’, George.”
“Good-morning, dad.”
“Enjoy your run to Hereford?”
“Immensely. Did you?”
“It was not so bad. Rather tiresome, you know, travelin’ alone, but
on the return journey I fell in with a decent sort of Frenchman who
helped to pass the time.”
“Monsieur Marigny, in fact?”
“Ah, you know him, of course. I had forgotten.”
“I have met him. He is not the kind of person I care to know.”
The Earl selected an egg, tapped it, and asked his son what he
thought of the crops—did they want rain? The two were breakfasting
alone—at the moment there was not even a man-servant in the
room—but Lord Fairholme had long ago established the golden rule
that controversial topics were taboo during meals. Medenham
laughed outright at the sudden change of topic. He remembered
that Dale was sent to bed in the Green Dragon Hotel at eight o’clock,
and he had not the least doubt that his father’s ukase was really a
dodge to secure an undisturbed dinner. But he was under no
delusions because of this placid meeting in the breakfast-room.
There was thunder in the air. Tomkinson had warned him of it
overnight.
“There’s bin ructions while you were away, my lord,” the butler had
whispered, waylaying him in the hall just before midnight. “Lady St.
Maur has upset the Earl somethink dreadful;” and Medenham had
growled in reply: “Her ladyship will lunch here at one o’clock to-
morrow, Tomkinson. Have an ambulance ready at two, for she will
be in little pieces before I have done with her. The mangling will be
somethink orful.”
“But what has become of Dale, my lord?” went on Tomkinson in a
hushed voice.
“Dale? He is all right. Why? Is he in the soup, too?”
“No, my lord. I’ve heard nothink of that, but he sent me a wire from
Bristol——”
“A telegram—about what?”
“About a horse.”
“Oh, the deuce take you and your horses. By the way, that reminds
me—you gave me a rotten tip for the Derby.”
“It was a false run race, my lord. The favorite was swep’ off his feet
at Tattenham Corner, and couldn’t get into his stride again till the
field was opposite Langland’s Stands. After that——”
“After that I’m going to bed. But I forgive you, Tomkinson. You put
up a ripping good lunch. You’re a far better butler than a tipster.”
This brief conversation had illumined at least one dubious page in
the records of the past few days. Medenham realized now that his
aunt had emptied the vials of her wrath on Mrs. Devar, but, that lady
being absent in body, the Earl had received the full dose. It indicated
somewhat the line he should follow when, breakfast ended, his
father suggested that they should smoke a cigarette in the library.
Once there, and the door closed, the Earl established himself on the
hearth-rug with his back to the fireplace. It was high summer, and
the lazy London heat crept in through the open windows; but the
hearth-rug constituted a throne, a seat of Solomon; had his lordship
stood anywhere else he would have felt lacking in authority.
“Now, George, my boy, tell me all about it,” he said, with a genially
paternal air that lent itself admirably to the discussion of a
youngster’s transgressions.
Medenham had a sense of humor denied to his well-meaning sire.
He recalled the last time he had heard those words. He and another
sprig of nobility had come up to London from Winchester without
leave in order to attend a famous glove contest between
heavyweights, and there had been wigs on the green before an irate
head-master would even deign to flog them. That had happened
twelve years ago, almost to a day. Since then he had fought through
a great war, had circled the globe, had sought the wild places of
earth and its monsters in their lairs. He knew men and matters as
his father had never known them. A Prime Minister had urged him to
adopt a political career, and had virtually promised him a colonial
under-secretaryship as soon as he entered parliament. He held the
D.S.O., had been thanked by the Royal Geographical Society for a
paper on Kilimanjaro, and cordially invited by the Foreign Office to
send in any further notes in his possession. Months later, he heard
that Sir Somebody Something was deeply interested in his
comments on the activity of a certain Great Power in the
neighborhood of Britain’s chief coaling-stations in the Indian Ocean.
The absurdity of a family conclave in which he should again be
treated as a small boy, and admonished to apologize and be flogged,
while it brought a smile to his lips, banished any notion of angry
remonstrance.
“By ‘all about it’ I suppose you mean that you wish to hear what I
have been doing since last Wednesday,” he said pleasantly. “Well,
dad, I have obeyed your orders. You asked me to find a wife worthy
to reign at Fairholme. I have succeeded.”
“You don’t mean to say you have married her!” shouted the Earl, in a
purple upheaval of rage whose lightning-like abruptness was not its
least amazing feature. Certainly Medenham was taken aback by it.
Indeed, he was almost alarmed, though he had no knowledge of
apoplexy in the family.
“I have not even asked the lady yet,” he said quietly. “I hope—I
think—that the idea will not be disagreeable to her; but a future
Countess of Fairholme is not to be carried by storm in that fashion.
We must get to know her people——”
“D—n her people!” broke in the older man. “Have you taken leave of
your wits, George, to stand there and talk such infernal nonsense?”
“Steady, dad, steady!” and the quiet voice grew still more calm,
though the forehead wrinkled a little, and there was an ominous
tightening of the lips. “You must take that back. Peter Vanrenen is
quite as great a man in the United States as you are in England—
may I even say, without disrespect, a man who has won a more
commanding position?—and his daughter, Cynthia, is better fitted to
adorn a coronet than a great many women now entitled to wear
one.”
The Earl laughed, with an immoderate display of an amusement he
was far from feeling.
“Are these Wiggy Devar’s credentials? By gad, that shabby little
wretch is flying high when she tries to bag my son for her pretty
protégée!”
“Don’t you think it would be wiser, sir, if you allowed me to tell you
exactly what has taken place since we met last?”
“What good purpose will that serve? I have heard the whole story
from Lady Porthcawl, from Dale, from that Frenchman—and Heaven
knows I have been well coached in Mrs. Devar’s antecedents by your
Aunt Susan. George, I am surprised that a man of your sound
commonsense should permit yourself to be humbugged so
egregiously.... Yes, yes, I am aware that an accident led you to take
Simmonds’s place in the first instance, but can’t you see that the
Devar creature must have gone instantly on her bended knees—if
she ever does pray, which I doubt—and thanked Providence for the
chance that enabled her to dispose of an earldom?... At a pretty stiff
price, too, I’ll be bound, if the truth were told. Really, George,
notwithstanding your very extensive travels and wide experiences,
you are nothing but a kid in the hands of a managing woman of the
Devar variety.”
“I am not being given in marriage by Mrs. Devar, I assure you,”
began Medenham, smiling anxiously, for the fatherly “tell me all
about it” was not being borne out by the Earl’s petulance.
“No. You can trust me to take care of that.”
“But are you treating me quite fairly? Why should the distorted
version of my affairs given by Lady Porthcawl, a woman whom
Cynthia Vanrenen could not possibly receive in her house, and by
Count Edouard Marigny, a disappointed fortune-hunter, be accepted
without cavil, while my own story is not listened to? I leave Dale out
of it. I am sure he told you the actual truth——”
“By the way, where is he now?”
“Somewhere in the neighborhood of Chester, I believe.”
“Have you discharged him?”
“No—why should I?”
“Because I wish it.”
“Why in the world are you so unreasonable, dad?”
“Unreasonable! By gad, I like that. Have I been gallivanting round
the country with some——”
“Stop! You are going too far. This conversation must cease here and
now. If you have any respect for yourself, though not for me, you
must adjourn the discussion till after you have met Miss Vanrenen
and her father.”
For the first time in his life, the Earl of Fairholme realized his
limitations; he was actually cowed for a few fleeting seconds. But
the arrogant training of the county bench, the seignory of a vast
estate, the unquestioning deference accorded to his views by
thousands of men who tacitly admitted that what he said must be
right because he was a lord—these excellent stays of self-conceit
came to his help, and he snorted indignantly:
“I absolutely refuse to meet either of them.”
“That disposes of the whole difficulty for the hour,” said Medenham,
turning to leave the room.
“Wait, George.... I insist——”
Perhaps a clearer glimpse of a new and, to him, utterly unsuspected
force in his son’s character withheld the imperious command that
trembled on the Earl’s lips. Medenham halted. The two looked at
each other, and the older man fidgeted with his collar, which seemed
to have grown tight for his neck.
“Come, come, let us not leave a friendly argument in this unsettled
state,” he said after an awkward pause. “My only thought is for your
interests, you know. Your lifelong happiness is at stake, to say
nothing of the future of our house.”
“I recognize those considerations so fully that I am going now in
order to shirk even the semblance of a quarrel between us.”
“Why not thresh things out? Your aunt will be here in a couple of
hours——”
“You refuse to hear a word. You argue with a hammer, sir. I shall
send a note to Lady St. Maur telling her that she has done mischief
in plenty without adding fuel to the fire by coming here to-day—
unless you wish to consult her, that is?”